But the introduction of labor duty cannot be limited to accounting and control over the sums of money signs that are concentrated in the hands of the propertied classes. Soviet power will have to implement the principles of labor duty also in relation to the direct activity of the bourgeoisie and propertied classes in the sphere of enterprise management and the servicing of these enterprises with all kinds of auxiliary labor: accounting, clerical, computational, technical, administrative, and so forth. In this respect, the task of Soviet power is also now shifting from the sphere of direct struggle against sabotage into the sphere of the organized establishment of affairs under new conditions, for after those victories which were won by Soviet power in the civil war, beginning in October and ending in February, the passive forms of resistance—namely, sabotage on the part of the bourgeoisie and bourgeois intelligentsia—were, in essence, broken. It is no accident that at the present time we observe an extraordinarily broad, one might say, mass reversal of mood and political behavior in the camp of former saboteurs, that is, capitalists and bourgeois intelligentsia. We now have before us in all spheres of economic and political life an offer of services from a tremendous number of bourgeois intelligentsia and agents of capitalist economy—an offering of their services to Soviet power. And the task of Soviet power now consists in being able to make use of these services, which are unconditionally necessary for the transition to socialism, especially in such a peasant country as Russia, and which must be taken with full observance of the supremacy, leadership, and control of Soviet power over its new—acting in many cases against their will and with secret hope to protest this Soviet power—helpers and accomplices.

In order to show how necessary it is for Soviet power to make use of precisely the services of bourgeois intelligentsia for the transition to socialism, we permit ourselves to use an expression which at first glance will appear a paradox: one must learn socialism to a considerable degree from the leaders of trusts; one must learn socialism from the greatest organizers of capitalism. That this is not a paradox, anyone can easily convince himself, if he thinks about the fact that precisely large factories, precisely large machine industry, which has developed exploitation of the toiling masses to unprecedented dimensions—precisely large factories are the centers of concentration of that class which alone was capable of destroying the dominion of capital and beginning the transition to socialism. It is not surprising, therefore, that for solving the practical tasks of socialism, when the organizational aspect of it is placed on the agenda, we must necessarily attract to the assistance of Soviet power a large number of representatives of bourgeois intelligentsia, especially from among those who were engaged in practical work organizing the greatest production within capitalist frameworks, and thus first and foremost—the organization of syndicates, cartels, and trusts. For solving this task, Soviet power will require, of course, the tension of energy, initiative of the broad mass of toiling people in all spheres of the national economy, for the old position of the so-called leaders of industry—the old position of chiefs and exploiters—this old position Soviet power will never give to them. The former leaders of industry, the former chiefs and exploiters, must occupy the position of technical experts, directors, consultants, advisors. The difficult and new, but extraordinarily rewarding task must be solved of uniting all the experience and knowledge which have been accumulated by these representatives of exploiting classes with the self-activity, with the energy, the labor of broad strata of toiling masses. For only this union is capable of creating a bridge leading from the old, capitalist—to the new, socialist society.

If the socialist revolution had triumphed simultaneously throughout the world or, at least, in a whole series of advanced countries, then the task of attracting to the process of new organization of production the best specialist technicians from the leaders of old capitalism would be extraordinarily facilitated. Backward Russia would not then have to independently think about solving this task, for advanced workers from Western European countries would come to our aid and would remove from us much of the difficulty in that most difficult task of transition to socialism, which is called the organizational task. Now, given such an actual situation, when the onset of socialist revolution in the West has been delayed and postponed, and Russia finds itself forced to hasten measures for its own reorganization—simply, if only in the interest of saving the population from hunger, and then in the interest of saving the entire country from possible military invasion—now we find ourselves compelled to borrow from advanced countries not the aid of socialist organization and the support of workers, but the aid of their bourgeoisie and capitalist intelligentsia.

And circumstances are unfolding in such a way that we can obtain this aid by organizing the cooperation of bourgeois intelligentsia in the matter of the new organizational problems of Soviet power. One can obtain this cooperation by means of high compensation for the labor of the best specialists in each sphere of knowledge, both belonging to our state and taken from abroad. Of course, speaking from the point of view of an already developed socialist society, it appears completely unjust and incorrect that representatives of bourgeois intelligentsia should receive compensation for their labor immeasurably higher than the compensation for the labor of the best strata of the working class. But in the conditions of practical reality…[19] we must necessarily solve the urgent task by means of this (unjust) compensation for bourgeois specialists at considerably higher rates. If we were to suppose, for example, that Russia, in order to organize production on new foundations, to increase the productivity of labor, to teach our people the art of working under better conditions—if we were to suppose that we would have to hire for this, say, two thousand greatest specialists of various spheres of knowledge—specialists from among the Russian and even more from among foreign, say, American—if we would have to pay them annually fifty or one hundred million rubles, then from the point of view of the interests of the national economy, generally from the point of view of the transition from obsolete methods of production to the newest, most perfected—such expenditure would appear entirely justified. For the teaching of the best methods and procedures of production such a sum must be given, and it is worth giving, and such a sum we shall have to give because the only other possibility of obtaining such leadership would be created exclusively by the victory of the socialist revolution in other countries.

Of course, the utilization of the labor and directing instructions of representatives of bourgeois intelligentsia in conjunction with the necessary control exercised by democratic organizations of toilers and Soviets, will create a whole series of new problems, but these problems are entirely solvable. And we cannot stop before any difficulties in solving these problems, for we have no other way out to the higher organization of production given the present state of affairs.

I shall go further. Greatest capitalism created such systems of labor organization which under conditions of exploitation of the masses of the population were the basest form of enslavement and the squeezing out of additional quantities of labor, strength, blood, and nerves by a minority of propertied classes from the toilers, but which at the same time represent the latest word in scientific organization of production, which must be adopted by the socialist Soviet republic, which must be reworked by it in the interests of the realization of our accounting and control over production, on the one hand, and then—the increase in productivity of labor, on the other. For example, the famous Taylor system, which has become widely distributed in America—it is famous precisely because it represents the latest word in the most reckless capitalist exploitation. It is understandable therefore that this system encountered in the working masses such a mass of hatred and indignation. But at the same time one cannot for a moment forget that in the Taylor system is contained enormous progress of science, systematically analyzing the process of production and discovering paths to enormous increase in the productivity of human labor. The scientific research begun in America in connection with the introduction of the Taylor system, especially the study of movements, as the Americans say, gave enormous material making it possible to teach the toiling population immeasurably higher methods of labor in general and organization of labor in particular.

What was negative in the Taylor system was that it was realized in the atmosphere of capitalist slavery and served as a means of squeezing from workers double and triple quantities of labor at the former rate of pay, completely disregarding the ability of hired workers to give without harm to the human organism this double or triple quantity of labor at the former number of working hours. The task which faces the socialist Soviet republic can be briefly formulated in the following way: we must introduce the Taylor system and the scientific American increase in productivity of labor throughout Russia, combining this system with the shortening of working time, with the use of new methods of production and organization of labor without any harm whatever to the working capacity of the toiling population. On the contrary, when properly guided by the toilers themselves, if they are sufficiently conscious, the application of the Taylor system will serve as the surest means toward further and enormous reduction of the obligatory working day for the entire toiling population, will serve as the surest means toward the accomplishment of the task which we can express approximately thus: six hours of physical labor for each adult citizen daily and four hours of work in the administration of the state.

The transition to such a system will require very many new skills and new organizational institutions. There is no doubt that this transition will cause us no little difficulty and that the posing of such a task will even cause perplexity, and perhaps resistance from certain strata among the toilers themselves. But one can be confident that the advanced elements of the working class will understand the necessity of such a transition and that by those conditions of terrible disruption of the national economy which have now been revealed for cities and villages, when millions of people have returned from the front, torn away from economic life and for the first time seeing the full extent of the disruption of the economy caused by war, there is no doubt—the soil for the preparation of public opinion of the toilers in this direction has been created, and that the transition which we have approximately and tentatively outlined above will be posed as a practical task by all consciously advancing elements of the toiling classes, now having taken the side of Soviet power.